The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Breather Tube Filter or Oil Capturing Insert?

I did a search on the site and came up with more than 1000 hits for the "216 breather tube". I took my truck out for a ride the other day and then noticed a small oil stain under the breather tube near the distrubitor the next morning. I took the tube out and it is empty. I couldn't find anything on the site about some sort of filter or some type of steel wool or something like that so it could still breath and then let the oil splatter drip back into the motor, have you ever heard of something that goes into the tube to block oil splash or oil drops from making their way down the tube and then on to the garage floor?

If you have a clear passage from the block right to the pipe end then somebody has modified the pipe. There should be a baffle system in there. A lot of these old sixes drip out that pipe after use. I put a PCV system on mine and thus it doesn't drip from the pipe.

as far as i know there was never anything in those tubes,it was made to relieve pressure in those engines, they stopped useing them when they came out with the pcv system, i dont think i would put anything in it either , those small peices of steelwool may get into your crankcase and do some damage to your engine, if your engine is a little tired that could be the reason for the drips, too much blow by maybe, if you had the engine rebuilt maybe somebody left out that plate on the inside of your engine that covers that hole, you should be able to see the screw end from the outside of your engine,but then it might drip oil from them there holes if it wasnt there.

Thanks Fred, Looking at the truck pic on your gallery link the breather tube looks the same on the outside. I guess I should take it out again and see if there was a baffle I might of missed.

Thanks Benny, Good Point on the steel wool. I was just thinking off the cuff and steel wool wouldn't be a good product for sure.

I dont think you can do anything about the oil drips unless you change over to a pcv system which burns the excess oil. I think what is happening is that the hot oil vapor is condensing inside the cooler draft tube, collecting and dripping out. Like many have said before, if your stovebolt is not leaking oil, it doesn't have any.

Inside the outer tube, there is an inner tube which does not have a clear passage down to the bottom. It is connected to the part that mounts in the block. There are holes in one side of the inner tube and there is a passage way that leads around to the outer tube and down to the bottom.

When I installed my PVC valve, I pressed in a piece of tubing that blocked the holes in the baffle system so that the top was only connecetd to the crankcase. I drilled a hole in the top amd mounted the PCV grommet there. I sealed the slits on my valve cover and installed a vented oil cap that has a mesh inside.

You need to think about when and for who these trucks were designed. The next thing to consider is this design was based on a cost per part basis. That draft tube design was used for some 20+ model years. Oil drips do not figure into the equation for the time/era they were produced.

One of the mysteries here is why some drip and some don't. I have seen rebuilt 261s that were bored and put together properly and they dripped from the tube. Other sixes that were not freshly rebuilt did not drip.

the design of it was to pull vapors out of the motor while it was going down the road. at a certain speed a slight vacuum is produced in the pipe due to its location and design. fresh air is introduced into the top of the engine on the vents on the valve cover or a oil fill breather and the air along with any combustion gases were pulled out via the draft tube. the draft tube does'nt work if the truck isnt moving and only starts to work at a certain speed.

Well reading everything posted it sounds like it is working the way it was designed. The pull between here and Napa is a little much for that little 216 and that's where I went that day. The slight amount of dripping (about the size of a silver dollar, you younger guys will have to Google those) was a mixture of water and oil once I looked closer, so all in all it would seem it is doing the exact thing it was designed to do, the hot breather tube most likely had some oil spray and condensed with the cooler air in the tube when I got home and it dripped a little. DaveF. That is the first time I read if your Stovebolt is not leaking oil it is empty. Very Funny! Thanks.

It took me a while to get all the leaks stopped, the oil pan, the steering box, the tranny, the rear end, my water leak, the garage was actually dry for a while and then when I saw that when I got home I said Darn, not again!

Thanks All. John